Scotch the Sniper
Summary "I'll have a bottle with my name on it..." A sniper whose favourite drink is Nuka-Cola and Scotch over ice. Unlike the Cell Dweller, he is no stranger around the opposite sex, or, if his first encounter with the Cell Dweller is anything to go by, the same sex. He's a known regular at just about every brothel in every town he's visited, often emptying his pockets with a few hours of highly self-destructive entertainment revolving around alcohol, the occasional narcotic chem use and a wide-range of sexual partners. Appearance "What are you looking at, you feckin' zombie? What's the matter, never seen a smooth-skin before?" Scotch is of average height and build, wears a stetson on his head and a long duster jacket atop some light armour, on his body. He also wears a pair of heavy boots, which help him to travel across the wasteland. Although he can't remember when we got the boots, he knows that he's had them for a very long time. Despite never seeming to maintain his hair, facial or otherwise, he appears to always have medium-length hair and a goatee, both of which are a deep brown. Biography "Sure, I make mistakes, but sometimes, the wrong choices lead us to the right places..." Much of his past is unknown, even by himself. He knows nothing about his mother or father, having lived most of his pre-pubescent life with ghouls, until they left him behind in an attempt to find a land of their own. Once he had exacted his revenge upon them for what he saw as a betrayal, he decided to travel, taking his rifle and name with him, taking on odd-jobs for various people, in all fields of life, sometimes acting as an enforcer, an assassin, a thief, a slaver, a merchant, a guard, a farmer, a postman, a delivery-guy and an escort, in both senses of the term. It is said he got his name from shooting a Scotch bottle at some distance, but at what distance and the type of weapon change with every telling, and as such, this story is under dispute. His only family was his wife, whom he lost to slavers. He doesn't share much of his married life, so little is known about his wife. He has however, shared the following: "She was called Lenore. Absolute stunner - the kind of gal who'd knock you for six without batting an eye. I was drawn to her instantly, and thankfully, she was drawn to me. She liked books, pre-war mostly. We knew a "writer" back home, but she never cared for his work. No, she preferred the classics - Shakespeare, Keats, Dickens. Those lot. She even started getting into a bit of Orwell before the end... She wanted me to read them too, so sometimes, I did. Regardless, she had this dream of owning all the known works of Shakespeare. I looked and looked for her - we got a lot of them, not all, but a lot. We were missing the prize jewel though, Hamlet. She longed for that one more than any of the others. I've still not found a copy, but I look wherever I go... Just in case." Despite being set in California during the early 1900's, Scotch has always been partial to "Of Mice and Men", written by John Steinbeck, taking the events within the book as a metaphor for the events that occur in the wasteland, with there being a scarcity in security between people and their lives, with both being constantly uprooted by the comings and goings of others, with Lennie taking the guise of a friendly, but dim-witted super-mutant, with his much cleverer and caring human companion, George. Although there are certain obvious reasons why the comparison doesn't work, it's an idea that has stuck with him since he first read the book. Although unconfirmed, his pungent aroma - whatever alcoholic substance he can get his hands on - and his general demeanour, strongly hint that he is an alcoholic, if not entirely dependent on alcohol to function, and has been called by some, "the village drunk", regardless of whether of not he was a resident of the village or not. He is also sometimes referred to as "the drunken fool", although in most cases, he reportedly responds with "no, that title belongs to a man much greater than I". He once claimed to have successfully amputated, cleaned and sewn back on, his own left leg, although, when asked how, he responds with "I don't really remember, I was a bit drunk". This particular story is not widely believed to be true. Scotch's Stories Scotch has always been known for telling stories about his time in the United Wasteland, having travelled, according to him "the length, breadth and width" of the mainland. The accuracy of these stories is disputed, as, usually, they end with him being the lone survivor of an incident, or having happened so far away that anyone else who might know the truth are too far away to consult. Sometimes, he does have pictures, usually quite low quality, taken with some sort of camera which he managed to acquire at some point. Below are a selection of his stories. The One Legged Man From Basingstoke "Did I ever tell you guys about that guy I met in what's left of Basingstoke, to the north-west of that cellar we went to? Man, was he a laugh. I mean, okay, he had one leg, was blind, and made jokes about both ALL the time. Boy, did he crack me up. I mean, he's dead now - a ghoul killed him for his shoes. Never really understood why he kept the second shoe... Always struck me as odd, but to be fair, old-habits die hard. Much like my alcoholism. I can't help it. It's habit since my wife was taken by that slaver. Man, that was a depressing time. Still is. Life's like that. Bad stuff happens, but you have to live with it. If you live with it, you either get fucked, or get rewarded. Well, he got fucked. Me? We'll have to see..." The Last Tin Can In Chapel "Over in the East Midlands, near Cambridge, there's a city called Peterborough - well, there was. It was hit by one of the nukes that started this god-damn thing, so there's not a lot left. There is, however, a cathedral there, which was adapted into bunkers to support people in case of a nuke. As far as I'm aware, not many people made it there, and those that did, were killed by survivors scavenging whatever they could find. I went once myself, just to check it out. I was mostly passing through, trying to get somewhere worth being. So, I'm there and I see a door which looks out of place, so I try it, and it's locked. I pick it, being as skilled as I am, and head inside, finding a large trail of dead bodies. Most of them were quite beyond dead, so I left them be - anything worth taking had probably been taken. Instead, having no sense of real fear, I followed the trail, finding two guys standing with their guns at each other. I stood out of sight, watching, as they argued with one another. Apparently, there was an unopened can of peaches. Now, I love peaches, and I'd been eating irradiated cheese for a week, so if I didn't eat something decent soon, I was likely to get scurvy or the shits. Neither are good for someone who travels as much as me. They're stood there and I think, "jeez, will they actually resolve this, or should I just finish it myself?", then shot them both, very quickly, took the can and walked out of the structure. No sooner do I get out, then a woman jumps on my back, knifes me, then steals the can off me. I managed to stand, aim a perfect head-shot and make her head explode as if she'd eaten a grenade. The tin, it seems, was mislabelled - it actually had prunes in it. Not a massive fan of prunes, so I left them behind. No point eating something you know will give you the shits..." The Oakley Dilemma "I once ventured into the vicinity of Oakley, in Scotland. It's nothing special, and if the brochures are anything to go by, it wasn't before the apocalypse, either. However, it did become the home of a few dozen raiders who, instead of travelling around like hardcore apocalypse survivors, lived in their tower "Blair Tower", or something like that. I'm not a frickin' historian. So, there they are - about 36 raiders, all with half-decent weapons and a few women to spoil - living in this tower and the surrounding area. I decide not to enter the village, as it was undoubtedly a trap. Unfortunately, despite this decision, I was forced in by the untimely arrival of a half-dozen mutants, all waving guns around. Not a lot of choice for me, than to take cover inside a house. Needless to say, the result of this was 36 dead raiders, 6 dead mutants and a shit load of blood. I escaped the battle having killed at least 25 of the deceased myself, one of which was stabbed in the eye with an ice-pick (although, I'm not sure why anyone had an ice-pick...). I think the best thing to come out of it was that I managed to reach a total kill-count of 1004 people. It's more now, of course, but 1000 is a great achievement." Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay "I've travelled the length, breadth and width of the mainland, but my fondest bittersweet memory is probably that of my trip to Cardiff. It wasn't a special trip - I just decided to head west, see what I could see. I ended up sat on the end of a jetty at Cardiff International Bay. No-one there but me. No sounds other than my breathing and the waves against each other. For just a while, I could honestly believe that the world might once have been a calm and peaceful place - no ghouls, mutants or raiders, no scorpions or dangerous plants, no chance of having my legs torn off by rabid dogs, poisoning myself by drinking some water, and no chance of being imprisoned by slavers. I could imagine that this was once a world in which I could have lived happily with my wife, maybe even had a few children. I could have been happy, but instead, I'm alive now, in a world of horror and fear and lawlessness. My only solitude comes from alcohol and even that is likely to kill me. I've not been back to Cardiff." North By North-West "I've always been fond of travelling, but one time, I figured that I ought to do something good with it. Sure, I could travel to a safe place, a place where people are kind and caring and don't want to kill you all the time'. I then realised that such a place would have to be inside one of those cells that people talk about - there ain't no chance of getting in one of them any time soon, so why not just wander around a bit. I did a few jobs, did a bit of stealing, scavenging - heck, I found an old motor and tried to dismantle the energy core so that I could flog the power cells, but that didn't quite pan out. I was atop a big ol' hill of rubbish and from my perch, I did see someone in a fancy lookin' jumpsuit head towards a nearby town which was, by my reckoning, north by north-west of my location. I thought, hey, maybe they could use some help? Maybe good ol' Scotch can do some good, and maybe get something good in return. At that point, I thought the stranger was a female - it was the walk, y'see. I head into the town and figure the best place to wait would be the tavern - everyone heads to a tavern during their stay, and they would most likely want to know about the local area. When I got there, there was just the barkeep, Jack, who'd I'm sure I'd met before, but who seemed not to notice my presence. That suited me. I sat in the corner and waited. What more could a guy need to do, eh? Just sit there and wait. A mercenary, with a mutant and a squirrel on a cart, walked into a bar - the barman said, "What can I get you?". No joke. Sometimes, I think I'm not quite right in the head..." The Last Lifeboat "Back when I first really got to grips with the horrors of this world, like, 15 years ago, I had this wonderful idea about getting the hell off of this island and living in my own boat or something - at the time, I was living under near a rowing boat, which I'd overturned to make a half-decent shelter. Sure, it leaked, which was why I didn't use it to go to 'Les terres de la mort', over the channel, but it did serve the purposes I had in mind for it. I wasn't far from a small village of ghouls - most were reasonable people, often letting me help out around the village for food or caps. Sometimes, I'd go hunting with a few of them, sometimes cleaning, stuff like that, and sure, there were a few jackasses who treat me like shit - there was one of them, Jeffrey, who had a habit of trying to touch me inappropriately. He soon learnt to leave me be. And there were the ones who went feral, but they were often put down by those who had not yet turned. One day, sat in the bar, helping serve drinks for 2 caps an hour and a warm meal at the end of the night. It wasn't a living, but it kept me alive, and back then, that was all I wanted. We had the radio on - nothing good at first, but all of a sudden, the wireless goes haywire, and we start getting this new signal. Out comes a voice, claiming for there to be a boat on the coast, a big boat, with loads of supplies but no crew, then asking for any ghouls in the area to come to the coast and join the ship so they can sail off. Apparently, it was some religious group dedicated to ghouls. I'd heard of such things, but never seen anything, although, there were rumours that the rocket thing that flew overhead had ghouls in it, but no-one really knows. So, the ghoul village decides that it's time to move out and seek a new life, I ask to tag along, being a friend and having nothing else, so they let me. We get to the boat, having lost a few people and when we get there, there's one of those special glowing ghouls wearing a sailor's hat and welcoming people on board. When I reached him, he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me to one side. My whole body burned from his touch, heck, even his mere presence seemed to hurt me. He asked me my name, I said "Scotch" (the ghouls called me that after some trick shot I pulled on a hunting trip) and then he told me this one thing that I'll never forget for the rest of my life. He said, 'Well, Scotch, life is not fair. You will find a place where you feel like you belong, like you could actually be happy, and maybe spend the rest of your life there. But it is not here. It will never be here. You do not belong here." And with that, he picked me up, dropped me overboard and raised the gangplank. Luckily, I fell in the water which, although irradiated, stopped my head from hitting the floor and smashing. By the time I got back to land, the boat was beyond my reach. I sighed, took out my rifle (a reward from a ghoul I had saved from slavers a few years back), fitted half of a pair of binoculars to it (a reward from a ghoul scout I helped to track a brahmin with) and aimed at the boat, looking for the glowing one. I found him easy enough - it was dark by then, and he sort of stood out, you know? Needless to say, I pulled off the shot and they lost their captain. A few weeks later, I heard on a radio that a large boat had run aground near Hull. Since that day, I vowed never to be helpful towards a ghoul again - none of them backed me up and I felt betrayed - I still do, in fact." Philosophy Scotch, despite being an alcoholic, is a fairly intelligent inhabitant of the wasteland, having travelled a lot, read a lot of books and spoken to a wide-range of people. During his travels, he has often had time to formulate opinions on the wasteland, people and life in general. "The thing about life is that it doesn't matter what you do - you're going to be fucked over by people who want to live, more than they want you to live. You could do everything in your power to keep yourself safe, but it only takes a well-oiled palm for your sleeping location to be vulnerable, one reasonably capable sniper to blast a hole in your brain, or one poorly trained chef to poison you. You could do everything right and still die, just because that's the way the die was cast. Of course, people never want to admit that kind of thing. They want to think they're safe, happy and indestructible. They're not - no-one is. Not me, not you, not Dr Unu Sualaf Fection. No-one is safe, anywhere. And everyone wants to think they're a model citizen - we're all wrong, of course. First off, what are they a citizen of? The world? Woop-de-fucking do! Second, model? People either die young and good, or they live long enough to realise that they've got to kill, loot and lie to keep living. And there's this whole concept of places being civilized. Now, I don't care what anyone says - when the definition of a civilized settlement is "they don't shoot at you when you try to get in", there's something wrong with your definition. Civilized should be about everyone working together for a common goal. None of this "get one over" your fellow human. None of the economic gaps - in the wasteland, how are their any homeless people? The whole world is just so screwed up that no matter what, we're going to kill or die. That is life, these days. Wake up, kill, sleep. It's fucked up, but it's life. And I hate it." Scotchs sheet copy.jpg WP_20140718_004.jpg|A blurry picture of Scotch with his wife, taken from a dead slaver|link=http://the-united-wasteland.wikia.com/wiki/Scotch_the_Sniper Sniper_rifle_01.jpg|Scotch's trusty sniper rifle Category:Characters